Page 46 of Branches of the Willow

“No. I’m betting his skills and instincts will keep him alive a lot longer than you think. I want him to have a horrible time of it though, and then I want to have a way to track and locate him, so we can haul his ass out of there if we need to. Plus, it might be helpful to know if hunters can be transitioned into werewolves. That was a question even Serena couldn’t answer when I asked because it had never been attempted before since they’re supposed to be on the same team to guard witches from the dark ones.”

“I guess we can try it.” My dad shrugged his shoulders. “It’s not something we’ve ever even thought about. Honestly, it might give us some insight into how many people we still have down in the Locks to begin with. Hell, it’s been three years since we’ve put anyone in there.”

With that settled we got the three prisoners ready for transfer to the Locks and took the two-hour journey to get there. It wasn’t at all what you would think when imagining a prison. The Locks were built with supernatural beings in mind. An old missile silo was the basis for the Locks closest to us. The Silo itself was built to a depth of 180 feet underground. The Locks were retrofitted with a slide shoot that dropped the prisoners in at a level around 125 feet below the surface. The rest of the silo’s upper levels were closed off under poured concrete over rebar, and each level on the way up was infused with silver. The shoot itself was also lined with silver, making the 125-foot drop into the abyss below a painful one for those beings affected by it. Since the locks were built for our kind, in specific, it made sense.

The prisoners were knocked out during transport. As karma would have it, we used the same drug cocktail on them that they had dosed me with when I was taken to Sophia and Zach. While the hunter was still under, we tagged his clothing with several cameras, and implanted a tracking device in his right thigh. I suddenly felt like I was stuck in a spy movie where werewolves were working to save all of mankind. It was a ridiculous notion, but there you have it. It was the best idea we had, and our only chance at appeasing our curiosity about what happened once a prisoner entered the Locks.

As each of them woke up, we put them in the shoot, and let the bottom drop out. They literally rode the tube down to the safety floor. It was the top level available to the prisoners. The food and supplies were delivered three floors below that, so whoever was still left down there, most likely hung out around that area. Prior to dropping the prisoners down, we made a supply drop. It was our way of giving the newbies a head start to find a safe place to hide.

Asi brought a remote viewing unit with us, so we could watch the video feed while we were on location. As soon as we dropped the hunter, the video showed him shooting through the tube at a rapid pace, slowing only at the end when the shoot turned and shot back up one floor to spit the prisoner’s out after slowing them down a bit. When I first heard about the shoot in the locks, as a little girl, I had asked my dad if I could go ride it. Of course, I didn’t realize it was lined in silver, or that there could be a mob of murderous, scary-crazy shifters down there waiting to feast on my bones and do worse things before that too. Zach had told me about that later. His uncle hadn’t spared him those horrible details, and Zach, shared them with our entire class. We were eight years old at the time.

We watched the quick descent that the hunter made. It really did look like a fun ride for him. Apparently, silver had zero effect on hunters. It did spit him out quickly at the end. We watched him fly up into the air, and then land with an umph on a mattress. He shook his head to clear his brain of the drug-induced fog he was no doubt still under, and then he got up and started looking around. It didn’t take long for him to find the door that would lead him to the lower levels, but once he moved beyond the door, the level of metals in the walls made it impossible for us to keep a signal open. The video feed cut out just as we saw him approaching two men, and then the signal on his tracker was lost as well.

“Damn.” I shouted out my disappointment. “I guess the walls are too thick down there. Why didn’t someone wire this bad boy up before it was used as a prison?”

My father laughed at me. “We didn’t have that capability back then, and I don’t think anyone thought to make a sport of watching the inhabitants.

“Well, it was worth the shot. At least we know that they’ve made a comfortable landing spot for those coming down, because the mattresses weren’t in any plans I saw of the place. We also know there’s at least two other men down there,” Asi stated.

“Right, but it would have helped to know what they’re up to down there all the time. You never know when they might decide to attempt an escape.” Everyone turned to me then, and I just shrugged my shoulders. “You never know.” I pointed down there. “He’s not affected by silver, what’s to stop him from climbing his way back up the shoot?”

“You think he could climb up 125 feet of slick surface?” It was my father who questioned me.

“I don’t know what hunters are capable of. Do you?”

“Even if he could, none of the others would be able to, so it doesn’t matter,” my father shot back.

“Are we ready for these two? They’re grogginess is fading.” Mikael moved both women forward toward the tube, effectively cutting off my musings.

Clarissa started moaning as realization set in. “No, please, don’t do this to us.” Mikael didn’t waste a minute, he put her straight into the tube, closed the lid over her, and pulled the lever that dropped the bottom out, and opened the shoot up on each level for her to pass through. We could hear her screams echoing back up the tube as she went. The silver was burning her, and like a dumbass, she was letting it get the best of her. It would alert the others below that a female was being sent down if the hunter hadn’t already informed them of that. It would probably make for an easy initial get-away for him to announce that two women would be following him.

Annabelle was next, and she pinned me with a murderous stare as Mikael shut her into the tube. “No matter what we did to you, it couldn’t compare to what you do to me when you pull that lever.” She spat out.

“Only because Sophia’s spell failed, and I escaped. You earned your place in the Locks. You had a choice. You chose wrong.” I nodded my head, and Mikael pulled the lever. We listened as she screamed on the way down, until the depth of the building swallowed her up along with her screams. “Let’s secure the place and get the hell out of here. We still have an hour drive to get to Avery’s lands to drop Nicholai and Brian off.”

We had originally planned on taking them to Avery’s the following day, but the two men were excited to go take their place in a pack structure again, and Avery’s place was only an hour from the Locks, the two of them tagged along for the ride. They had been made to wait outside with the guards while we handled the prisoners inside.

An hour later we were pulling up to Avery’s and I was tired of sitting in a car. My cell phone rang as we pulled down the main road of the little town that the Daniels Clan inhabited. “Hello?” I answered.

“Jess, how long before you’re going to be back here?” It was Ashley and she sounded a bit frantic.

“It’s going to take us two hours by car to get back, why?”

“You might want to get started then. We have a baby on the way over here. I figured you would want to be here for the action. It’s not every day a new pup is birthed, and well, you know this one has complications.”

“Yeah, I know.” I sighed into the phone. “We’ll do what we can.”

“Can I help you?” Avery’s tall, blond, no-nonsense daughter greeted the car as we rolled up. When she saw it was Mikael behind the wheel of the car, she plastered on a mega-watt smile, and changed her attitude. “Oh, hi! I didn’t realize they were sending you. Did you finally get tired of the great white wolf playing damsel in distress?” Mikael quirked up his eyebrow in question and tried miserably to contain the smirk that started at the corner of his mouth.

“Where is your father?” I questioned without bothering to duck down so she could see who was speaking.

“I don’t know who you think you are, but you don’t come on our lands and order our people around. And you really don’t order me…” She had squatted a bit to be able to look me in the eye as she reamed me out for my disrespect. She ended up biting her tongue and the rest of her diatribe the minute she saw who was seated next to Mikael.

“You were saying?” I questioned.

“Mee-oow!” Nicholai snickered from the back and extended his fingers out in front of him like claws. “Please, don’t stop. I love a good cat fight, especially between two beautiful creatures such as yourselves.”

“Shut up!” I snapped at him.

---